


Shadows

by darthneko



Category: The Song of Naga Teot - Heather Gladney
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-29
Updated: 2004-12-29
Packaged: 2018-02-05 08:47:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1812364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shadows on the eve of war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows

They questioned me, as much as any of them dared, for taking him on. Naga knows it as well as I - my flawed Sati, witch and prophet, the last and best guard of my safety. The Nandos sent him to me under false pretense to guard my death, never knowing that he would so effectively guard my life.  
  
I have heard all of the protests against him; or all of the ones that they will speak in my presence, discounting the rumors that might touch on my person as well. I can guess at the others well enough. Naga hears them by his own means, the ones who would label him fit touched, crazed and unstable, dangerous. To himself or to me or to them, they can never seem to quite decide. Others label him native, as though that alone might make him less capable of his duties, the deep color of his skin equating an equally dim loyalty in their estimation. They are, one and all, afraid of him.  
  
They whisper amongst themselves that his power over me is unnatural. Based in sorcery or bewitchment, in tricks or drugs or lust; no two accounts can agree on means, but the effect is indisputable. I hold his Oath, I hold his life in my hands, but they whisper darkly that the black shadow that trails at my heels holds Tanman's counsel in his grasp and it makes them wary. They can not bribe him, can not corrupt him, can not sway him to their own agendas. He is the outsider in their midst and at my side he is the one shield they can not go through to get to me.  
  
It has not even been a full turn of the seasons since he stumbled into Tan, half dead and full of dire warnings and brash, desert arrogance. At the time I did not know, fully, what I did when I took him to my side. He proved an asset from the start; an unknown factor in the court, an ally that threw nobles and army alike into disarray by his very lack of regard for protocol and politics. He was a breath of much needed wind through the musty corners of Fortress, stirring up age old dust and sweeping clean all that he could lay hands on. I thought I had, at last, found a tool that I could both use and trust, his loyalty to me alone.  
  
I didn't realize, at the time, that it went both ways. Naga, like the finest of hunting cats, chose his own master - me. Like any man possessed of cat, I found that I was, in turn, owned; Naga's war, his demons and salvation, became my own. In taking his Oath I took not only his service to me, but his requests of me.   
  
He would die for me without a second thought. Can I, in all honesty, do any less?  
  
I don't have that option. I am Tanman; I am liege and lord, I am this land made flesh. My life is not my own to give, it never has been. If I were to take so much as a scratch for Naga I would never hear the end of it - not the least from Naga himself and any sane man avoids the whip of his thorn edged tongue in a fury. Lacking that choice, I do what I can; for him, for his people, for all of us. The war is here, now, on our very doorstep, and it will take all of us to survive it whether the dotards in council admit it or no.  
  
The weight of this land and all its people rests on me. It is a weight I am used to bearing. Naga is the first in a very long time to offer an assisting shoulder for me to lean upon. If it means adding his own burdens to mine then is it not a fair trade? They say that he has bewitched me. They may be right. Men have sold their souls for far less than the regard Naga bestows on me.   
  
There are times, in the dead of night, when I have measured my own worth through him. There are lesser men in scores who would run, pissing themselves, for the things Naga hands me as a matter of course. He will serve no man he does not deem worthy; he holds me to a standard even I do not know the limits of. When a day spent in council is wasted I have only to look and see that Naga is still beside me; I have not failed utterly.   
  
He is death given form, swift and merciless. He is the weapon and my hand alone rests on the hilt. He has taken my life into his own keeping; in turn, he gives his sanity and his soul into mine. It is a responsibility that can inspire fear as well as strength. They do right to question us, to question me. In each thinking to use the other we have inadvertently, between us, wrought such a spell as tales would speak of, bound together and each needing.  
  
I had to leave him behind. There are all of the obvious reasons as well as the unspoken ones; he knows it as well as I. As much as we are each others strengths we are also our own weakness. They would strike at him to reach me, to discredit us both, to chip and gnaw and pick at plans that are too thin to begin with, patchwork hopes hung on what we can scrape together.   
  
He knows all of the reasons. He knows, too, the truth which I told him as he raged against the inevitable - I will not risk him further. He has done enough, suffered enough, on my behalf. I can not take the hurt for him; the best I can do it try to protect him from his own zealousness. It is altruism and selfishness all in one; I protect him because I can, because I want to, and because I need him. I can not risk losing him. I could as soon cut off my own left hand - it might cripple me less. His eyes, his hands, the quicksilver mind behind them, are the only ones to whom I can entrust the family and people and city I leave behind.  
  
And Goddess willing, it will keep him from hurt. He will rage and fret and pace behind walls while I ride to war but I pray, I hope, that it will keep him safe. I have sat too many times at his bedside already as he wrestles back from injury taken in my name. I have seen him half dead in too many ways; I do not want to see worse.  
  
Less than a full year since he rode out of the desert, thin and ragged and sharp all over, as wild as a rock lion with a roar to shake the foundations of Fortress. They are more right than they know, his hidebound detractors who would see him put aside with the other refugees, dismissed and shamed. He is a danger. To them, and yes, to me.   
  
I am not my own. If I am not free to give him my life, nor am I free to give him my love. Sati and Liege Lord; we can be no more and the peculiarities we have forged into that are enough to raise hackles and set loose tongues to wagging. They would scream worse than witching, did they know he alone calls me kigadi. Brother, friend, best loved of all others; I no longer hear his brother's long ago voice in that word. Only his. To him alone I am not Tanman, not Caladrunan, but only Drin.  
  
It is an ache, cold and empty, at my side. We ride from Fortress in ranks, mounted strength that the people can see, that they might feel safe. We ride to war, and if the troops are new and half trained, still untried and rough, it is something only their commanders know. To the people, we are their sword and shield and pride.  
  
But my shadow is missing. There is no echo of his harsh voice at my side and twice in a double handful of steps I find myself beginning to turn, to share an observation, ask his opinion; to look at him, read what I can of his dark, shuttered face and in the flicker of his eyes. Naga has become the voice of the other half of my own mind; shut away from it for the first time in all the long winter, I wonder how I ever came as far as I did on my own.  
  
This is the danger. This is what can not be allowed. I can not afford to depend on him, nor he on me. We need the distance between us, now. We need to fumble, each alone, and find our singular feet once more.   
  
We had no words for each other beyond necessity, last minute relays of needed information and orders. All else was spoken long before. He will watch as we ride forth, I am certain, but I do not look for him. I make myself not look, not listen. A ruler must not ask more of his men than he would of himself; there is none of us who do not leave someone behind. But I wonder, as we pass through the gates of Fortress and out into the fields, how long it will be before I cease waiting for his voice and presence where I am accustomed to it. I wonder if we will, either of us, survive that long or pass that test.  
  
Goddess willing, we may triumph. Goddess willing we will return in strength, two halves made twice as strong in wholeness, and this war will be won, the land and people safe, the Osa swept from our borders.   
  
Goddess willing, I have chosen the right path for us. I don't know what else to do.


End file.
